airspring's Full Review: Sony Walkman MZ-E60 Personal MiniDisc Player
If you’re after a decent player for minidisc and you have the money for a new set of earphone and lots of batteries, this is the one for you.
Since I work six days a week in a mayor city in England I have to do a far amount of commuting, so to combat the boredom of commenting I listen to music. When purchasing a new player I required a small machine that sounded good, looked good, was not too heavy on the battery consumption. I didn’t want to go for a CD players because of their size, or an MP3 player because they are for people who don’t know anything about sound quality, and like to store their music collection on their hard drives.
Since I had already had minidisc-recording facilities at home, I decided a Sony minidisc Walkman was the right choice for me. I then bought the Sony MZ- E60 play only machine. In the few months I have owned it hasn’t failed me all that much. It’s a great little player, very compact, can be fitted into jacket pocket with ease and is very lightweight. It has an LCD remote control, ‘Mega bass,’ and all the usual trimmings.
The major problem with this particular portable is the earphones. They are atrocious. Failing to stay in your ears no matter how much you plead with them. You find your self almost constantly readjusting then so to stop them from tumbling out of your ear. They are very uncomfortable to ware for any length of time too, the edges of the plastic casing is shaper than you’d have thought. (The US version may be different of course) To make matters worse they don’t sound very good either. They’re just too bright for any form of normal listening, making all your favourite songs almost unbearable to listen to as the sound of the earphones are just too bright. It almost courses physical discomfort when you listen to some weighty music through them.
Take some advise from me, and get your self-a set of Sennheiser 800 earphones, they are much from suited to the job. They may cost a little, thought the musical enjoyment leaves nothing to be desired.
The MiniDisc player it’s self is very good indeed, it sports a remote control with a handy spring loaded clipper enabling the user to attach the small remote to their clothes (much better than previous models, which meant losing the remote control in ones clothing and having an embarrassing fumble in order to find it.) The remote control has all the functions the system requires, from a use function, to volume, track selection, and getting the name of the track to be scrolled across the miniature LCD screen. That screen is the only visual display the user has of the operation of the machine, (except a small light on the main unit indicating the system has power and is playing a disc.) This LCD screen on the remote control is extremely useful, allowing the user to see without having to look at the player it’s self what track is playing, the name of the track, the name of the disc, the amount of battery power there is remaining etc.
The player unit is not much bigger than a single MiniDisc it’s self, and weights next to nothing, about the same as a mid-range mobile phone. It can be bought in a variety of colour finishes (at least that it’s true in the UK) and looks fantastic. Sony is very good, (most of the time,) at spending a lot of time designing the way a product is to look. This player certainly does look very good indeed. The visage front is by no means as cluttered or crude as some of the other portable MD players available, the features are neat and tidy, with the operation buttons on the back of the player are small but well spaced out for easy use if you have large fingers. There is a Hold function which locks the buttons the machines from working so them from being accidentally pushed. The same can be found on the remote control. The unit has also a small switch allowing the user to select the amount of added bass they require. (I’d advise you switch the switch to one or even two for added bass, otherwise the music sounds a little flat and lifeless.)
One further shortcoming with this Sony is the batteries it runs on. This system, as with all other portables runs batteries and not rechargeable which is annoying and very expensive if you’re planning on a lot of use. The battery life is quoted in the instruction manual at roughly twelve hours, though in real terms the player may only reach an average six or eight. The battery indicator on the LCD remote control is not very accurate either, one minute displaying one bar of power remaining in the batteries, the next three bars!
In conclusion this is a fine example of a Sony product. It sounds good, is not too expensive to buy functions very well, and looks great. There are however a small number of short comings with this player, mainly the earphones, they don’t work well at all, they’re badly designed and don’t belong on such a good player as this. Similarly with the batteries, there is no method of recharging the battery, the system runs on dry batteries, and frankly eats through them. Rechargeable batteries are the way to go for portables and in this instance Sony have forgotten this fact in the name of cost cutting. A great little player though. Give it a try, just buy some new earphones
40-second antishock memory Digital Mega Bass system Repeat, shuffle playback modes 12 hours of playback with 1 AA battery Includes LCD stick remote co...More at Amazon Marketplace
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